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Ball of Light Clocked At 1,800 Miles/second!

August 21, 1996. Sarpy County, NE.

1,800 miles/second! That's 6,480,000 miles/hour! This speedy phenomenon was captured on video tape by D. Morss and P. McCrone. These researchers were
monitoring the top of a thunderstorm with low-light, high-speed video equipment, when the ball of light "popped out" of the top of a thundercloud and flashed
across their instrument's field of view in 1/10 of a second. Nevertheless, it was caught on six video frames. Morss commented as follows:

"It's something that you're going to have to scratch your head and think, 'What kind of phenomenon could form this kind of light?'

.....

"It's got to be some kind of trapped charge that popped out of the top of a thunderstorm."

Comment. Perhaps 1,800 miles per second should really be 1,800 miles per hour. This velocity would be comparable with that of another very speedy "ball of
light."

May 25, 1997. Near Loco, Oklahoma.

In what might be called a "video replay" of the above phenomenon, L. Lamphere caught a similar fast-moving "object" near a tornado-spawning storm. He and
his team had a digital video camera trained on the storm and were taking time-lapse still photos. Lamphere reported:

"The ceiling was maybe 900 feet. We were about four or five miles from the storm, which was tracking southeast. The object was well-defined and
well-lit, but was obscured briefly by scud clouds. It dipped and bobbled in its trajectory before it flew into a storm known to contain hail the size of
baseballs and then reemerged, apparently undamged.

"Scientists at the Astrophysics Department at the University of Oklahoma believe the object was solid and may have been traveling between 9,000 and
20,000 mph."

Comment. Just one high-speed "object" might be dismissed as, say, a photographic artifact. But, when two are caught by cameras imaging violent
meteorological events, we must conclude that something unusual is going on.